Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.
Bedford woman indicted for allegedly shooting and killing her parents last June
Prosecutors say Jessica Cavallaro murdered Thelma Tatten and Mark Cavallaro with single gunshots to the head as they sat in a car June 6.
A Bedford woman was indicted on two counts of first-degree murder last month for allegedly shooting her parents as they sat in a car outside her boyfriend’s house.
Prosecutors say Jessica Cavallaro, 24, murdered Thelma Tatten and Mark Cavallaro, both 56, with single gunshots to the head on June 6. She pleaded not guilty to murder and firearms charges during her Oct. 15 Middlesex Superior Court arraignment and was ordered held without bail at MCI-Framingham, where she’s been in custody since her June district court arraignment.
Previously:
The morning of the murders, Cavallaro left work early due to an anxiety attack and returned to her boyfriend’s Bedford home, where she was living at the time, prosecutors said in a statement of the case. She allegedly told her boyfriend’s father her parents were taking her out for breakfast and left again, only to return a few minutes later saying she had killed her parents.
Advertisement:
Officers arrived at the home to find Tatten and Mark Cavallaro still sitting in their SUV, which had rolled onto a neighbor’s lawn, according to the court document. Tatten was “obviously deceased,” according to prosecutors, and Mark Cavallaro was still alive, though unconscious. He was pronounced dead at a hospital hours later.
Inside the car, investigators also allegedly found a gun belonging to Cavallaro’s boyfriend.
“His normal practice was to secure the firearm in his safe, but he did not have a specific memory of doing that this time,” prosecutors said.
Advertisement:
The boyfriend allegedly told police there was not a round in the gun’s chamber, meaning Cavallaro would’ve had to have “racked” the firearm in order to use it. Cavallaro and her boyfriend had visited a New Hampshire shooting range about 100 times, and she was familiar with his gun, prosecutors allege.
Cavallaro’s lawyer, Lorenzo Perez, has alleged she suffers from a “long-standing mental illness.” Perez told The Boston Globe the “tragedy … stems from her severe mental illness — a phenomenon which, sadly, seems to be increasingly common.”
Last month, a judge granted Perez’s request for up to $1,500 to retain a medical doctor or psychologist with forensic experience “for the purposes of evaluating the defendant for competence to stand trial, criminal responsibility, and/or whether [s]he was of diminished capacity at the time of the crime.” Perez did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Meanwhile, prosecutors allege Cavallaro was calm and cognizant around the time of the murders, with witnesses purportedly describing her as “sane, lucid and happy” in the days and hours prior.
“During booking the defendant was calm, cooperative, articulate, and ultimately chose to invoke rights that demonstrated she had the ability to discern that it would not help her to speak to the police,” prosecutors said.
Advertisement:
Cavallaro is due back in court for a scheduling conference Nov. 19.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com